I am just sat down to tell you that I have been thinking
of you this hour past, according to my promise. Can you say you have fulfilled
yours as well? But why say this hour? There is not one in the day that is not
full of your idea, and devoted almost entirely to the recollection of the happy
hours I have spent in your society, and which are now fled, perhaps, for ever,
as you are no longer here who made Lisburn at all tolerable. We no longer hear
your voice, “pleasant as the gale of spring that sighs on the
hunter’s ear,” in our little circle, which was so often
delighted and enlightened by your bewitching prattle; and I now, for the first
time since my return from Belfast, begin to feel Lisburn insupportable. I
almost regret having ever known or formed a friendship for you; but I lie; it
is impossible any one could ever wish he had not known you, whom you honoured
with your esteem. What have you to answer for to me? By over-refining my taste
you have made the girls of this town insupportable: after having been blessed
with your society it is impossible to be ever on friendly terms with them; and
I am convinced I can never experience so sincere a friendship for one of my own
sex. I don’t know the reason, perhaps you can tell me; but I think those
subsisting in general between men are fickle and
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I believe I promised to tell you how we spent the day, on
the morning of which you left us, and you shall have it as well as I recollect.
You left us a little before eight o’clock; we followed your carriage out
of town and watched it till the last winding of the road concealed it from our
view; we then returned across the fields with no very enviable sensations, and
climbed every ditch we met with to endeavour to catch another glimpse of
you—we got just one, as you passed a grove on your left, nearly a mile
from town, and then lost you in the distance. I am almost ashamed to tell you I
could hardly suppress a tear at thinking it might probably be the last time I
should ever see those with whom I had passed away so many pleasant hours: but
to quit such nonsense and finish my journal:—George
was with us after breakfast, and told us he could very willingly sit down and
cry (you may guess the reason), but it would not be like a man. We were talking of you all day, and cursing the chaise-boy for
coming home so soon. Did you ever hear of such a set of selfish rascals? In the
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Did you think your friends would have disgraced your remembrance so much as to tell a devil of a lie the very day you left them?
You told me you did not think George possessed of much feeling, but, faith, he has more than you think. He told me on Friday morning he absolutely could not refrain from crying the night before, when alone. Wasn’t it good and friendly of him? And though unlike a man, d—e but I like him the better for it. “Certainly, Miss Owenson” I think him one of the best, good-natured lads I was ever acquainted with—one of George’s speeches!!
I was employed most of Friday in putting a little cabinet in order, and have it now filled with your wee notes and other dear little remembrances of you. I keep nothing else in it but Ossian, Werter, and your poems, as the only company worthy of them; and I hope you will soon add another to the number. I have brought into my room the chimney-board that was in Boyce’s house the night of our little hop. I would not suffer them to destroy the laurel that encircled it, but have it put up just as it was when you saw it.
| 246 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. |
I have been reading Werter; don’t you think the sixty-eighth and the latter part of the seventy-first chapter very beautiful? As yet you have not marked it, and I will turn over to that which the hand of taste and judgment has approved. How kind in doing so! It gives me another remembrance of you in addition to all your dear little relics.
And yet I know not whether I should thank you for so particular a mark as you have left on this page; it seems to imply something I am not over-pleased at your thinking, if you can think so. You have marked this sentence strongly, “And yet if I was now to go, if I was to quit this circle, would they feel, how long would they feel that void in their life which the loss of me would leave? How long—yes. Such is the frailty of man that then where he most feels his own existence, where his presence makes a real and strong impression—even in the memory of those who are dear to him—there also he must perish and vanish away, and that so quickly.” Ah, don’t think it will be so with us; you do not, you cannot think so. The loss of you has left on us “a real and strong impression” indeed; but if you will think you will be forgot by us, you may at least allow that you will first drink of the waters of Lethe.
I have began, and read the first book of Robertson’s Charles the Fifth,
and it does justice to your recommendation. I have made a good many extracts
out of it, and hope I shall be improved by them. It is you I have to thank for
this mode of imbibing instruction; as, but for you, I should never have thought
of it,
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